#swana tolkien

[brighter-arda]

Elenwë and Amarië friendship for @tolkiengenweek

[Image description

1: an Indian woman wearing gold earrings and beige sari (?) looking down from a ledge. Text = 'Elenwë'

2: dark grey background, mosque window shape with lanterns. Gold border has text 'born in valinor' 'beloved of princes of the noldor' 'but parted from them' 'daughters of the vanyar'

3: dark grey background, mosque window shape with flowers, hanging lanterns and moon and star shapes. Gold border has text 'bound in faith' 'bound in friendship' 'bound in grief' 'bound in sisterhood'

4: Arab woman kneeling on the ground in black clothing decorated in gold. She wears decorative gold chains over her face. Text = 'Amarië']

#elenwe #amarie #silmarillion #tolkien women of colour #south asian tolkien #muslim tolkien #swana tolkien #tolkiengenweek #moodboards and edits #toi's creations #mepoc #contains image description #(elenwe model is aditi rao hydari who is indian) #(amarie model is unspecified arab woman)

[antiracist-tolkien]

Harad Through Fandom Eyes

Plenty of people acknowledge that LOTR's Haradrim, Easterlings and Variags are racist. However, I've seen less discussion about how fandom adds even more racism into the mix. This seems to be mostly because many people have very little knowledge about West Asia and North Africa, aka WANA [Why say WANA/SWANA instead of Middle East?] and what anti-WANA racism looks like.

I'm going to focus on Harad because this is the region that we know the most about. If you need a brief refresher:

Harad, or Haradwaith, is the region south of Gondor. There's a long history of violence between Harad and Gondor which dates back beyond Gondor even existed, to when Numenorians colonised Harad and repressed the people. Since then there were multiple wars and for long periods of time Gondor occupied parts of Harad. The Haradrim fight for Sauron in LoTR, partially due to their hatred of Gondor.

Harad is divided into two. Near Harad is strongly North Africa coded, and Far Harad is sub-Saharan Africa coded.

(Image description in alt text.)

Tolkien uses multiple different names to refer to the people of Harad (Haradrim, Southrons, Swertings, etc.) However, these seem to be the people of Near Harad, who he differentiates from the people of Far Harad. (There's some serious anti-blackness in this next quote, so skip over it if you need to. I only put it here as evidence that the use of Haradrim/Southrons in LOTR refers to Near Haradrim.)

[...] Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand, Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues. - Return of the King

There is more to say on this than I would be able to fit into this post. There's a discussion to be had about Tolkien's textual and real life relationship with Black people. There's also a discussion that needs to be had about how Tolkien's racism is often excused with the idea that he was a 'benevolent' or well-meaning racist, a product of his time. It's an excuse that ignores the violence of quotations like this and the way that he wielded his whiteness against Black people in academia and writing.

I don't have time or space for those discussions in this post, but I want to acknowledge them.

What I want to discuss here is fandom portrayals of Haradrim. I'm not going to talk too much about the in-text racism, because that has been extensively covered elsewhere. But in summary:

The idea of the good white guys conquering the lesser brown 'Men of Darkness' is inherently racist

Tolkien's description of the Haradrim, such as repeatedly describing them as a cruel and warlike people, is also racist

The one paragraph where Samwise feels empathy for a dead Haradrim soldier does not lessen the racism.

With that out of the way, let's talk about fandom.

There's a gaping void in the information we're given about the Haradrim, so of course fandom attempts to fill the gaps. Fans often take inspiration from WANA. But many fans don't actually know that much about WANA and don't realise how much of their perception of it is based on racist and imperialist propaganda.

In fannish depictions, Harad all too frequently becomes an exotified fantasy that pulls from Western perceptions of WANA. Orientalist ideals of a mystical, magical, and yet dangerous place predominate the fannish idea of Harad.

The first thing that you should know about WANA is that it's an extremely culturally, religiously and geographically diverse place. If your depiction of Harad is entirely desert, or made of a culturally homogenous people with a narrow range of skin tones and features, you need to expand that. Equally, depictions of Harad as more 'socially backward' than other areas of Middle Earth stem directly from racist propaganda.

Too many stories write Harad as misogynistic and homophobic, often in direct contrast to other areas of Middle Earth. As many WANA people have pointed out, these kinds of sweeping generalisations are often specifically targeted at WANA because of racism.

Mysterious cursed objects from the 'far away lands of Harad', decadent sultans, the fetishization of cultural practices like belly dancing; these are all forms of Orientalism. Female characters may be sexualised, shown as seductresses or members of harems. (By the way, Westerners tend to have a very incorrect understanding of what harems actually are/were. They were the part of a Muslim household reserved for women and pre-pubescent boys. It was outsiders who perceived them as fundamentally sexual spaces and created the modern tropes of sexual harems.)

Male characters may be violent, cunning, greedy, dangerous and strange. There may be public executions and enslaved peoples, regardless of the complete absence of a textual basis. All of these things stem directly from racist ideas of WANA as 'barbaric' and 'uncivilised'.

In fact, Haradrim were once enslaved by Numenorians. They were victims of violent colonisation that continued into the days of Gondor. They have every reason to hate the 'Men of the West' and fight against them.

On a final note, the most major and dangerous WANA stereotype is the portrayal of WANA people as terrorists. This isn't a trope seen in Tolkien's works because it's primarily a post-911 phenomenon. But it's something that you must be conscious of if you're writing about Harad or other WANA-coded regions.

#harad #lord of the rings #meta #racism in tolkien #tolkien fandom racism #personal thoughts

[bleakbluejay]

i want to see fantasy but like in a setting other than medieval europe. i want to see fantasy in feudal japan, or fantasy in the islamic golden age. american urban fantasy (both modern and futuristic [i see you, shadowrun!]) isn't super uncommon but i love that too! i was writing a story that was fantasy in the american wild west.

i love elements of fantasy very deeply but limiting it to medieval europe just kinda blows. i want to see readers as a whole give the time of day to fantasy authors from different cultures and backgrounds. i want to see works by swana or aapi authors reach the same notoriety as grrm and tolkien and pratchett.

#eli talks #idk what to tag this as. #if you have recs send me them! i love pratchett and grrm to pieces #but i would like to read fantasy that isn't written by white men at some point #and that takes place in a different setting for once

[solring3n]

Like all of sauron's human allies were poc coded. The easternlings, the haradrim, they were ALL SWANA coded, like?? Whats not clicking?? U can enjoy lotr but you have to understand : whether You like it or not, professor Tolkien was racist

#lotr #lord of the rings #very angry #apologies for typos #i have no respect for this language at all #the rings of power #cuz thats what inspired this rant #people whining abt poc actors being casted for it

[brighter-arda]

Directory

UPDATE: 26/11/22 The links no longer work in the android mobile app and can only be opened in browser. if you are on mobile please use the blog search function instead. you can search many terms at once by putting a comma after each term

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My edits

toi’s indigenous tolkien series

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Fandoms

Posts are tagged #the hobbit, #lotr or #silmarillion. Lotr and hobbit posts are also tagged as #the third age to make it easier for people who have not read the silmarillion to filter out the posts.

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Ethnicity

These tags have had to remain very broad because it is hard for me to tell apart specifics sometimes. if you believe that I should change the tags on any of my posts please let me know.

The list of current tags is below. Tags with less than 10 posts are italicised

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and the names of the original artists. It will take me time to add these as I must go back through all of my posts. I am open to other suggestions!